Timothy Kurek grew up hating homosexuality. As a conservative Christian deep in America’s “Bible Belt”, he was taught that being gay was an abomination before God.

But when a Christian friend in a karaoke bar told him how her family had kicked her out when she revealed she was a lesbian, Kurek began to question his beliefs. Amazingly, the 26-year-old decided to “walk in the shoes” of a gay person in the United States by pretending to be homosexual.

For an entire year Kurek lived “undercover” as a gay man in his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee.

I think people’s beliefs often change, when they have gay and lesbian friends. This is why there is such an divergence by age on some issues. Many people over 45 never grew up with gay or lesbian friends. But today there would be few who don’t go through school or university without knowing or being friends with people whose sexual orientation is different to theirs.

His account of his year being gay is an emotional, honest and at times hilarious account of a journey that begins with him as a strait-laced yet questioning conservative, and ends with him reaffirming his faith while embracing the cause of gay equality.

Along the way he sheds many friends, especially from Liberty, who emailed him after he came out asking him to repent his sins and warning that he faced damnation. He does not regret their loss. “I now have lots of new gay friends,” Kurek said.

What good friends, telling him to repent his sins or he will go to hell.

In one gay bar, Kurek was stunned to discover gay Christians earnestly discussing their belief in creationism. “I found gay Christians more devout than me!” Kurek says. He became active in a gay rights group and wound up joining a protest outside the Vatican’s embassy to the United Nations in New York.

However, there was a cost. To gauge his mother’s true reaction to the news that her son was gay, Kurek read her private journal. In it he found that she had written: “I’d rather have found out from a doctor that I had terminal cancer than I have a gay son.”

But Kurek’s journey also became hers. Eventually she was won over and changed her views. “My [mother] went from being a very conservative Christian to being an ally to the gay community. I am very proud of her,” he said.

Love conquers all.

Finally Kurek’s journey ended when he revealed his secret life and “came out” again, but this time as a straight Christian. However, he says one of the most surprising elements of his journey was that it renewed his religious faith rather than undermined it. “Being gay for a year saved my faith.”

Kurek feels his experience should not only show conservative Christians that gay people need equal rights and can be devout too, but can also reveal another side of evangelicals to the gay community.

“The vast majority of conservative Christians are not hateful bigots at all. It is just a vocal minority that gets noticed and attracts all the attention.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2012 at 1:00 pm and is filed under United States.
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It’s great that he made such a change with his family and his story might make other fundies rethink for a moment, which is a win. But, my initial reaction is distaste at someone lying to his friends and family in such a way for a year. If I’d been his friend, the gay thing wouldn’t have made any difference to our friendship, but the lying would probably end it – how could you trust him after that?

“I think people’s beliefs often change when they have gay and lesbian friends”

Perhaps. I have two friends who are gay and two cousins who are gay (though they’re both young and confused in general I suspect). My friendship and love for them means I respect them and treat them as I would expect to be treated, but it doesn’t change my view on the nature of their sexuality or my views on SSM attraction and marriage.

If someone’s beliefs change just because they get a new friend, I suspect it’s more a reflection on how little they’ve though about it and social consequences of re-ordering ‘the family’, rather than some road-to-Damascus experience.

With regard to the guy’s project. Good on him. Though I have my views on homosexuality and SSM, a totally agree that there are plenty of people out there who unfairly discriminate against gay people which is wrong.

Not fantasising RRM!
Just got some good friends who are members of the gay community and from the hair-raising stories they tell there is no freaking way you could infiltrate gay bars and ‘pretend to be gay’ for a YEAR without umm ‘indulging’…

I see stories like this for what they really are – slick, surreptitious propaganda conducted by sexual militants. Homosexual marriage and adoption are just conduits by which homosexuality and other forms of aberrant sexual behaviour are to be shoehorned into all corners of law and governance.

Seriously, why on earth would you pretend to be gay? I mean, thats just.., well…. gay!
He went from being one of the ‘hateful Christian bigots’, straight into a gay bar you say? Cool story but my moneys on the fact he was in the closet the whole time and just didn’t want mummy to find out.

What an awful man, lying to his mother like that! I agree with realize in that you could not trust him at all after that. The assumption here is that the ends justifies the means, or that the good that came out of it justified the evil that was done, ie finding out what living as a “gay man” was like, but when it comes down to it, he would have seriously worried so many people in his life that he seems to not give a damn about. What if he had pretended to be a drug addict and stealing to fuel his habit, would he have walked away from his friends who tried to get him to stop and warned him of the consequences if he didn’t?

The problem that he had going into this is thinking that gay=evil, and now he’s turned this around into gay=good. But that whole way of looking at it is wrong, in that the orientation isn’t good or evil (though it is a heavy cross to carry for those who have it), and it’s the sexual behaviour that is evil. It’s the sexual behaviour that his friends were telling him to repent of, or should have been telling him to repent of if they were as confused as he seems to be about the whole thing.

I’ve just returned from a week in Sydney and met up with some friends (either one or both are lesbian – I haven’t asked) and they just told me some friends of ours that I knew twenty years ago have broken up because the husband decided he was gay and left his wife for a man. My opinion about him is as low as for my female cousin who left her husband for another man. And yet for the gay person, we’re supposed to celebrate the fact that he has found his true self, never mind his destroyed marriage, devastated wife and children who just have to deal with their father’s confused choices in his life.

Easy way of getting your fifteen minutes – pander to the so called “gay” community”, a vapid bunch of people who define themselves by their “sexuality” and want to pretend it is a characteristic like race, whereas in reality it is just self absorbed, self indulgence,

Lots of natural things are repulsive. Gastroenteritis is only natural, but you wouldn’t want the flusher to be broken. Placentas, phlegm and… you get the picture. I should stop replying to an obvious troll.

Oh, and for that one year, I was just pretending to be gay. Yeah, just pretending.

Anyway……..Longknives you are a very mischevious fella – ‘gay bar activities’ – such sordid insinuations. So lets open up your doubletalk shall we. Gay bars by and large are as per any other bar in the world except the boys like the boys and the girls like the girls – they all like beer and wine and they like to dance to music. The bars your are referring to (and trying to have us believe make up the sum total of gay bars) are the likes of sex clubs and fetish bars. Go to any large city in the Western world and these bars exist (in tiny numbers) – however Mr Longknives you can equally find a great deal more straight versions of these places – a whole lot more!

So please if you must cast aspersions on gays this way please don’t be so clumsy.

Now to the guys article in question – I read it and will get the book – mainly cos I am a practicising Christian and gay so the story appeals from a spiritual perspective.

Andrei – your comments are very unkind – you describe us as vapid people, self absorbed and indulgent – wow. My friend if you travelled the path of a gay person from childhood you may not have decided to use such venom, you may perhaps have some understanding of what it is for a 12 year old boy to know he is different and that it is somehow bad – and not tell anyone until he is 25 that he is gay (and trying desperately to date and like girls – now that will screw your head up big time) and trying to take his life in the Waitakere Ranges because when he did confess to his Baptist Pastor he was gay he was outed to his congregation and cast out of his church and told by his parents never to contact them again. Vapid, self absorbed and indulgent – hmmmm I don’t think so.

@Urban Redneck, et al. Studies show that homophobic people have closet homosexual tendencies. Shown homosexual porn, they exhibit greater sexual arousal than non-homophobic people. So, basically, because of the society they live in, they are actually attempting to repress their own sexuality. I suppose that now you’ll all go into denial. People are from all parts of the spectrum. Why do men play rugby? So they have a legitimate reason for hugging other men. 10% of men are gay, so 1.5% of every rugby team is gay. Perhaps that explains the referees. In any case. If homosexuality so repulsive, why then is it such a huge part of the porn on the Internet? Women having sex with women, men having sex in groups with a woman. Sex is the biggest single topic of interest on the Internet, and porn is at the heart of it all. Seriously people, let others do what they want with regard to sex. If you have a problem with homosexuality, it is probably you that are the problem.

Chinarugby-
“Gay bars by and large are as per any other bar in the world ”

Come on mate, I have no problem with gay marriage, gay adoption, gay whatever…
But don’t try to play the ‘holier than thou’ card- My gay friends are rampantly promiscuous and quite proud of it. The stories they tell me about Auckland’s Gay Bars and what goes on in their seedy confines shocked even me! (and I’m a man of the world..)

Studies show that homophobic people have closet homosexual tendencies.

To not like something is not a “Phobia”. Any study that assumes it is phobia can safely be disregarded. It is also total rubbish to assume that people who disapprove of homosexuals are “in the closet”.

I am not bothered by homos and the whole thing is a big non-issue to me. But it does nothing to advance gay rights by presenting such nonsense and pseudo science as fact. What it does do is erode your credibility.

……“The vast majority of conservative Christians are not hateful bigots at all. It is just a vocal minority that gets noticed and attracts all the attention.”

I don’t even think it’s that. Probably around half that “get noticed” are painted as hateful bigots but are actually very good people who merely get pilloried for saying something that’s out of fashion.

Oh, and there was a case of someone doing essentially the opposite a few years ago with not dissimmiliar similar results. Name was Kevin Roose I think. (Thought the title of his book is absolutly daft.)

Studies show that homophobic people have closet homosexual tendencies.

Studies show that the word “phobia” is misused, its meaning poorly understood and consistently used out of context.

I’ll give you a tip, when someone disagrees with you they aren’t actually terrified, they don’t have a mental disorder, and they aren’t going to kill you.

Studies have also shown that people that frequently use the word “homophobia” are usually very fearful and intolerant of those that hold an opinion contrary to their own, another word for this sort of intolerance is “bigotry”.

This is an interesting ‘story’ for several reasons. Supposing it’s legitimate (even though it absolutely reeks of bullshit) you have got to wonder why anyone that claims to be a Christian would see deception as a virtue when the bible seems to indicate that such behavior is sinful.

Why couldn’t he just be honest and talk with homosexuals? why did he have to lie in order to interact with the gay community? couldn’t he talk with his mother and simply explain his concerns and his horror at the bigotry his friend experienced?

I have known several gay people and found that they respected me more when I was honest instead of patronizing them with trendy “gay love” like so many insecure people tend to do.

How does someone that identifies as being gay relate to God as a gay Christian? do the moral guidelines against promiscuity and sexual deviancy still stand? do they accept their sexuality but refrain from gay sex? Do they pray and ask God to help them stay celibate?

Seems to me there could be a broad range of ways to interpret “gay Christian” that don’t specifically endorse a ‘gay’ lifestyle.

“The vast majority of conservative Christians are not hateful bigots at all. It is just a vocal minority that gets noticed and attracts all the attention.”…..

The vast majority of Christians who disagree with same sex conduct are not hateful bigots either – that’s just the way they are portrayed by gays because it’s easy to get the sympathy vote when it seems someone hates you and you are the victim. In fact, I don’t know anyone who disagrees with same-sex conduct who is a ‘bigot’. That’s just an emotionally charged word that’s thrown at anyone who disagrees with the conduct of gays. When ‘bigot’ gets thrown into a discussion, it turns a debate nasty, which is just what some want.

“I think people’s beliefs often change when they have gay and lesbian friends”

Perhaps. I have two friends who are gay and two cousins who are gay (though they’re both young and confused in general I suspect). My friendship and love for them means I respect them and treat them as I would expect to be treated, but it doesn’t change my view on the nature of their sexuality or my views on SSM attraction and marriage.

If someone’s beliefs change just because they get a new friend, I suspect it’s more a reflection on how little they’ve though about it and social consequences of re-ordering ‘the family’, rather than some road-to-Damascus experience.

Do you have kids under 20 EWS? I can guarantee you that they will accept gay rights one day, even if you indoctrinate them with Christian theology now. If not them, then your grandkids. So in effect, you are condemning your own future lineage for being people who, according to you, don’t know how to think.

I can guarantee you that they will accept gay rights one day, even if you indoctrinate them with Christian theology now.

You are assuming that christians are teaching their kids to treat homosexuals as people who deserve fewer rights, and ought to be treated differently. I think that you may find that assumption to be a lot less true than you think it is.

Liberal Minded Kiwi – that’s just it: society is as open and accepting of gays as it’s ever been. Even in countries where same-sex marriage is legal, such as Canada, gays still aren’t happy, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with discrimination.

The vast majority of conservative Christians are not fashion disasters at all. It’s just that they reject mainstream gay hairdressers and fashion designers due to an irrational fear of Catching Gay Cooties, so they tend to dress in seventies polyester, wear cardigans and have badly outdated hairstyles. Oh, and have nightmares about being chased down darkened corridors by (deep breath…) Giant Lesbian Maori Deconstructionist WINZ Beneficiary Pro-Choice Devils waving labyris pitchforks.

This whole story is just bullshit. The extremist fringe in the homosexual and lesbian world are probably the most accomplished liars and propagandists of any pressure group anywhere and idiotic claptrap like this is regularly fed to the media who sick it up with glee to show how ‘inclusive’ and ‘non judgemental’ they are. Surprise surprise… DPF fell for it.

I do find all this venom amusing. Hello? There’s abundant, scientifically rigorous evidence in support of LGBT rights, folks. And both the centre-left and centre-right social liberals recognise that. Who am I to disagree with John Key and David Cameron?

Sigh. At the risk of repeating myself with an earlier mailing in another thread, in response to Kea, and reposted because I believe in civil discourse and clarification…

To reiterate the most common research findings- marriage equality and same-sex parenting do not affect the educational attainment or future employment prospects of such children, and same-sex parents have excellent levels of spousal communication, parent-child communication and disciplinary boundary setting.

If boys are brought up in lesbian-led households, they have excellent interpersonal skills and take gender equality for granted when it comes to any heterosexual relationships that they might have in the future. As for girls, they tend to become assertive and independent young women and usually undertake employment in non-traditional and lucrative employment areas. They don’t end up dropping out of school early and truncating their education because they have higher self-esteem.

The above are why a range of mainstream child health, welfare and development organisations support marriage equality and same-sex parenting within the United States and elsewhere- the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the US National Association of Social Workers, the Child Welfare League of America, the North American Council on Adoptable Children, Barnados and the Canadian Psychological Association. When it comes to research, that is published within peer reviewed journals. There is now enough such rigorous research to ground the public policy positions cited above. Indeed, the Florida Supreme Court recognised this when it came to striking down Florida’s Anita Bryant era prohibition against adoption for eligible same-sex parents several years ago.

There’s also a recent highly dodgy piece of junk science doing the rounds at present, defended by the Christian Right and no-one else:

In his longitudinal/long-term study, Regnerus compared a children of straight couples control group and a ‘children of divorce’ reference group. There is no seperate category for lesbian and gay parents in this project.

Unfortunately, this is where the trouble began for critics of his project. The latter sample of ‘same-sex parents’ was miniscule and did not rely on self-described lesbians and gay men, but labels applied to them by their offspring. There was no seperate research category for same-sex couples. Instead, the project relied on anecdotal perceptions of respondents (18-39) and did not differentiate whether the parents had stable or established lesbian or gay identities, or whether they were in continuous relatonships, episodic and non-cohabitating casual relationships or one night stands with the same sex. The study does not deal with same-sex parenting within stable and established couples. As is noted below, this is where numerous mainstream professional child health, welfare and development organisations have objected to the research design and findings.

The latter is significant because such sampling bias means that there is no guarantee that the parents of respondents themselves identified as lesbian or gay. If they did not, the study therefore does not evaluate whether the latter had access to same-sex parenting resources and social networks available within organised LGBT communities. Moreover, the study does not cover LGBT family structures where childbirth and childrearing occur within the context of the relationship. These have been shown to be the results of painstaking deliberation and negotiation, as well as preparation for the responsibilities and rewards of parenting ahead in successive mainstream work.

While Regnerus and the University of Texas have defended the propriety of his study, it has been dogged by persistent questions about funding and research design bias as well as poor execution. To begin with, Regnerus received $US750, 000 toward his study from the antigay Witherspoon Institute, one of whose board of directors is conservative Catholic marriage equality opponent Robert George. Then there’s the matter of the journal that he submitted the finished research paper to- Social Science Research.

there are troubling questions about whether or not the “blind’ peer review process was transparent and objective in Regnerus’ context. These have centred on editor James Wrights’ prior professional association with Regnerus over a previous publication, and the affiliation of another member of Social Science Resarch’s Board of Directors, Wilcox, with the anti-SSM “Marriage Law Project” at the University of Virginia.

While the University of Texas has cleared Regnerus of apparent wrongdoing in this context, criticisms have continued apace from such sources as fellow Carbondale University sociologist Darren Sherkat, who has severely criticised Social Science Research’s peer review processes within a previous audit. The Chronicle of Higher Education has published numerous other criticisms- and more significantly, there have been objections from numerous professional associations.

The American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Medical Association, US National Association of Social Workers, American Psychoanalytic Association, California Association of Social Workers, American Academy of Pediatrics and California Psychological Association have all contributed an amicus curiae detailing the defects in Regnerus’ research project and design.

Reference:

Karen Golinski versus US Parent Office of Personnel Management, John Berry and Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the US House of Representatives: Amicus Curiae Criticism of Same-Sex Parenting and Regnerus Study: http://tinyurl.com/7g55hzt

And as for other points often raised by social conservative uber-statists:

And those Westboro Baptist chucklehead inbreds were subject to some forcible restraint at a recent military funeral, which they tried to disrupt, I’m happy to read. Regardless of one’s feelings about either the Afghan or Iraqi Wars, or LGBT service personnel, disrupting the already existing ordeal of a broken, grieving family mourning the loss of a much loved son or daughter, husband or wife, is completely reprehensible. Even if I usually uphold free speech, why can’t it be civil, respectful and appropriate, especially given these heartbreaking circumstances?

And this particular funeral was that of a married lesbian servicewoman, let it be added (married to a fellow female soldier, that is). Which raises the question- shouldn’t equality of sacrifice lead to other forms of equality?

The Clerics of Saudi Arabia draw upon “science” to support a view very different to your own.

It is only your arrogant Eurocentric white liberal view, that makes you think your science is any more credible.

Your assumptions about equality of the sexes ( and other liberal stuff) are held by virtually NO ONE in a global context. Even in our society those concepts have only become popular in the last few decades. In the oldest developed cultures of the world, they have not caught on.